


I Want to Slay My Demons (But I've Got Lots of Them)

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:59:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1358377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abbie remembers beheading a man and then nothing. Waking up in the twenty-first century is not what she had in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want to Slay My Demons (But I've Got Lots of Them)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to thatdamneddame for the beta, writing the ending, and basically making all my hard life choices. 
> 
> This was inspired by this fanart http://gemsicle.tumblr.com/post/64585234989. It's lovely, you should all go and check it out. Title from "David" by Noah Gunderson.
> 
> Let me know if you spot any erorrs, incorrect tags, etc.

Abbie wakes in the ground and all she knows is that she’s cold and damp. She remembers the battlefield, the sound of fighting and gunshots ringing through the air and the taste of blood heavy on her tongue. There was a sharp pain in her chest and a burning in her head, and then—nothing. Everything after that is fragments and unclear, telling her nothing about why she seems to have been buried alive.

She claws her way to the surface, breaking through rotten wood and loose gravel. There are splinters under her nails and embedded in her palms by the time she’s breathing fresh air, but it’s worth it to feel the cold on her skin. When she’s pulled herself from the ground, she realizes her clothes are dirt stained but not covered in blood. She runs her hand over where she distinctly remembers being shot, the Hessian solider triumphant even as he fell to his knees.

There’s a glimpse of Kaleb in the memory, putting pressure on her chest, begging her to hold on, while a priest mutters something angrily, and then nothing but pain.

 

+++

 

Nothing about this place is familiar. There are old books on a crumbling jut of stone and a ring of clay pots encircles her makeshift gravesite, but nothing to give her a clue about where she is and why she was buried here instead of in an actual cemetery.

There’s a roaring coming from somewhere above ground, and she spots a staircase tucked around an outcrop of the cave. Whatever’s up there can’t be more confusing than what surrounds her now.

 

+++

 

The woods at least are familiar and make it clear that she’s still in Sleepy Hollow. The great metal contraptions roaring about are new, though.

 

+++

 

They’ve turned the livery stables into some sort of shop and people on the streets are dressed so strangely. She’s acutely aware of the dirt on her dress and the bonnet covering her hair. No one stops her though, and she takes comfort that whenever she’s woken up, she doesn’t have to explain her movements because of the color of her skin. 

That momentary comfort is gone when men in uniform surround her and call her a “person of interest,” sticking her in a cell without any other explanation. She overhears them talking about her clothes and the beheading of some man, a crime committed by an unknown male in similar garb. Abbie bites her tongue on her questions. Better to sit and listen to the men talk. They act as though she can’t hear every word. 

No one pays her any mind. At least that much hasn’t changed from her time. 

 

+++

 

A woman comes to her cell and introduces herself as Detective Andie Brooks. She’s wearing pants and Abbie is envious. Clearly, standards have changed, to show one’s legs so freely.

Detective Brooks doesn’t drag Abbie out or call her anything other than Miss, but something in her eyes makes Abbie nervous. She politely asks if Abbie would please come with her, and Abbie goes, cataloging possible escape routes when Detective Brooks’ touch on her shoulder makes her flinch.

Another officer strap her hands to some sort of machine that will know if she’s lying and asks her if her boyfriend beheaded a man earlier this evening. 

Abbie answers patiently, stays her anger and bites her lip on a cry when apparently, two hundred and fifty years have passed, but her eyes keep returning to Detective Brooks.

She tells them about being shot and potentially having hallucinations of her husband and a priest chanting over her and then waking in a cave. She doesn’t tell them that the last real thing she remembers is beheading a man they’re describing, one with a broadax and wearing a British army uniform.

They don’t mention anything about a bow branded on his hand and she doesn’t volunteer the information. 

 

+++

 

Lieutenant Ichabod Crane offers to take her to the psych unit at St. Gregory’s. He’s polite enough, but Abbie knows he saw something in the woods when his partner was killed. 

“You want my help, which suggests you have no other options.” Abbie says as he leads her outside, still handcuffed.

Crane scoffs. “I watched the interrogation. You didn’t tell us anything. You probably don’t _know_ anything. What makes you think you could help me?” 

“The man, the one who beheaded your partner—he had a brand on his hand, the shape of a bow, didn’t he?” 

Abbie stumbles when Crane jerks to a halt. He sighs. “I’m not going to say that I believe you, but I’m the closest thing to it that you’re gonna come across. Get in the car.”

“Look,” she tries again, “it can’t be coincidence that I find myself here and then the man who died with me appears as well. It has to mean something.”

“It’s not possible.”

Crane opens one of the side doors for her, gesturing with exaggerated chivalry, and Abbie has had enough. “Well then, thank you so much for clarifying. Here I thought I’d actually awoken in the future. And that my husband had been dead for two hundred and fifty years. I’m glad that everything I’m seeing and hearing and touching is impossible. Because that means it isn’t actually happening!”

He looks almost apologetic, before ushering her firmly into the car.

 

+++

 

As requested, Abbie directs Crane to the cave where she woke. Washington’s bible is there, a bookmark noting a passage in Revelations.

Crane still doesn’t believe, but as he urges her back up the stairs, the verse still rings in Abbie’s head. _And his name was Death. And then a voice like thunder said, “Come and see.”_

 

+++

 

Before he leaves her at St. Gregory’s, Crane tells her about seeing four white trees with his brother in the woods. He says he blacked out and that afterward his brother never quite recovered, while Crane kept quiet. He says he knows what it feels like for people to call you crazy.

Abbie can appreciate his empathy, but he’s not the one being left here. 

 

+++

 

She dreams of Kaleb in the asylum. Dreams of woods and birds and a creature with horns and pale skin, four white trees looming behind it. Kaleb calls her the first witness and then she wakes to Crane setting her free. 

The gnawing fear that she will be left here to disappear eases. Abbie knew what happened to girls in places like this back in her time. Centuries might have passed, but some things only change so much.

 

+++

 

Now she just needs to convince Crane that she knows where the horseman’s head is buried. And that he’s the second witness, but one step at a time.

 

(Later, standing in the street with her hand clenched around the handle of the jar with the Horseman’s head in it, Abbie stares into the cemetery where he had vanished and wonders where he’s hiding, how long they’ll be safe.

“So,” Crane starts, and Abbie can feel his presence like physical touch behind her, “not only did you not stay in the car, but you took my shotgun with you.”

She shrugs and turns to face him. “You needed my help. Would you rather I have let the Hessian behead you, too?”

He frowns. “Whatever this is, it’s only going to get worse, isn’t it?”

Abbie sighs; she doesn’t want to see the weight on his shoulders and know that she put it there. “Probably.”

“Outstanding. Well, come on, Miss Mills,” Crane says with a smile. “We have a head to hide.”

Following him back to the car, Abbie thinks that the maybe the future won’t be so bad if at least she has Crane on her side.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads.


End file.
